


Freight Car

by darthpumpkinspice



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Bucky Barnes Has Issues, Bucky Barnes Recovering, F/M, POV Second Person, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-21
Updated: 2016-07-21
Packaged: 2018-07-25 18:09:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7542739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darthpumpkinspice/pseuds/darthpumpkinspice
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In Wakanda, Wanda and T'Challa pull Bucky from cyrofreeze with a plan to fix him from within.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Freight Car

**Author's Note:**

> Basically just wanted an excuse to see Wanda and Bucky interact, while also exploring the inner workings of Bucky's psyche. I figure after decades and decades of being "the asset" it would be difficult to revert back to being Bucky overnight, and he'd be pretty rattled after everything hydra did to him. Enjoy! Reviews are lovely!

This world is as red as that star carved into your arm, and from the corner of your eye you think you see the shadows undulating with life.

The girl stands next to you, smiling. _“Warm welcome,”_ she says lightly. She isn’t really here. You aren’t really here. All this is make-believe. All this is her doing. This place surrounding you…from the hungry shadows to the soft red glow from a manufactured sun…it’s all in your head.

You feel sick. Your arm is heavy and glistens in the light as if with blood. Your mind spins, trying to remember how you let this happen.

 

* * *

 

 

It had been Wanda’s idea. You learn this after it has already been decided. You are pulled from cyro and when you awaken you find yourself in a sun-drenched room, fitted with a new vibranium arm. Someone has tucked you into a white bed, with sheets that are too silky soft and a mattress that threatens to swallow you whole.

You hear a polite cough, and you sit up and turn your head to the young king casually reclining against the wall. He’s dressed sharply- in a perfectly tailored grey suit- and as he steps forward his eyes look almost golden in the light.

He offers a slight smile, and you think he means to speak but you have no patience for pleasantries.

“Am I fixed?” you ask bluntly.

This takes the king off balance. You see the tension in his jaw, you see a dozen emotions flit through his eyes. His answer is telegraphed on his face, you do not wait for him to say it out loud. “You promised me you wouldn’t pull me out until you found out how to fix me. I’m a danger, you told me you wouldn’t bring me back until you knew how to get _hydra_ out of my _head-_ ”. You are growing angry, your words are rushing together.

T’Challa stops you, lays his hand gently against your chest. “Calm, Barnes.” You shudder, and slowly unclench the fists you hadn’t realized you’d made. T’Challa gazes down at you with eyes full of infinite sympathy, and you force yourself to relax.

He pulls his hand away. “We had an idea.”

“We?”

That is when _she_ steps into the room, the red witch in all her dubious glory. You’ve fought beside her but never exchanged a single word with her- and somehow you think this is the first time you have really _looked_ at her. You admit she is lovely, dark and slender with a subdued radiance.  

You stare at her, waiting for an explanation, and she turns away, silently deferring to T’Challa. He seems happy enough to oblige. “Wanda is gifted. She can see inside a man’s heart and mind, pull at their fears and weaknesses. She thought she could try this with you- to go inside your mind to help you defeat the brainwashing yourself.”

Wanda nods, and both her and T’Challa fall silent.

In the end you shrug. What’s another person inside your mind anyway?

 

* * *

 

  

Her nails are too bright and too red as she lays them against your temples. The slight press of them against skin feels like a deliberate intrusion and you return her quiet smile with a warning scowl.

“You need to let me in, soldat,” she murmurs, dark eyes imploring. “Open yourself to me.”

Despite the dig of the nails, her voice is soothing, and lends itself an intimacy you latch onto. Or perhaps that is simply the accent, comfortingly Slavic and sultry and _familiar_ (you _know_ you were never a soviet, but the memories get muddled and sometimes you find yourself dreaming in Russian).

So you open. You spread yourself out before her, you dissolve the mental walls you have carefully constructed. Her smile becomes _just-slightly_ predatory (unless that is your imagination too) and you close your eyes. The room fades away and then you feel a fullness in the back of your head as she invades, spills her power inside of you, stretches herself wide until you think she might _be_ you. Maybe she’s been you this whole time. For a second there is no Bucky Barnes, you are Wanda Maximoff- dead family and dead brother and half-dead heart, peering into the mind of a Cold War relic…

And then you snap back into yourself, and when you open your eyes you stand across from Wanda in the center of your own head.

_“It’s less grey and wrinkled then I would’ve imagined,”_ you try to joke.

_“It’s just a construction,”_ she says. Her accent is somehow thicker here…perhaps just responding to what you find more comfortable. Then she winks, _“lot of room for it though.”_

It takes you a second longer then you’d like to admit before you get it. You laugh a little. There’s a lot of empty space in your head is the punchline. You wonder if there’s empty space in your heart too, but that’s less of a funny joke.

When you look up, Wanda is staring at you expectantly. Her hand is outstretched. _“Show me a good memory first, James. We can start from there.”_

You don’t reach to take her hand. Your name sounds wrong on her lips- maybe she sees this thought, for she blinks twice, smile fading. You don’t want to touch her. She looks fake; her skin is waxy and her eyes are like painted glass.

Her hand remains stubbornly in the air. _“Trust me, soldat.”_

You obey. As you reach out you think she looks human again. Her cheeks are flushed with life and her eyes are no longer so blank. Your hand slips into hers and the world spins.

Your clothes are gone, and there’s a girl above you. Her head is tilted up, her neck is bared and her blonde hair cascades down her back. She rolls her hips rhythmically, her mouth opens and she starts to moan-

No.

The girl is suddenly gone, and you’re scrambling for the sheets to cover yourself. A humiliated apology is already forming in your throat, but Wanda stops you with a playful grin.

_“No need to be ashamed, soldat. We all have human needs. Even you…”_

Wanda leans down to kiss you, and her dark curtain of hair spills around you and-

Maybe it’s your imagination that she kisses you. Is it also your imagination her lips taste like spices and honey?

You’re in Siberia now, dressed as the Soldier, and you smell of blood and smoke. You’re in the chair, and there is a man pacing before you, reading off the words –

-but this is not Karpov. This man speaks with a German accent, and his hair is too light. He swings around to face you, and you recognize him. He is von Strucker, but you can’t remember ever serving under him…can you?

From beside you Wanda whispers an apology, her breath tickling against your neck. Strucker flickers out of existence, and Karpov takes his place.

_Longing._

_Rusted._

_Seventeen._

You think he reads the words in Wanda’s voice, and though you can no longer see her you can feel her acutely within you. She stands inside your brain and holds your heart in her hands. Should she choose to squeeze-…

_Daybreak._

The list continues. You find yourself too mute to scream, too frozen to flee. Where would you even go? Wanda surrounds you.       

When Karpov finally gets to that last phrase _freight car_ you are yanked out of Siberia, pulled into that steel and frost train where Bucky Barnes died.

The star-spangled man with a plan that you followed unquestioningly is screaming your name as you plummet, and you close your eyes wishing you had died on the snow covered rocks below. The men who find you will remake you…it is a cruel mercy that they save you. You should’ve died on that train, you should’ve never had followed Steve, you should’ve…

You’re a winter soldier, not a summer patriot. When the rest of the boys got to go home and build a white-picketed American Dream with their rosy-cheeked wives, _you_ were conscripted to fight in another war. You watch the snow fall around you and you let yourself dream of a reality where you went home too.

You see fur-lined boots next to your head and resign yourself for what happens next. But when you look up at the face under the hood it’s only Wanda, her crimson smile is in sharp contrast to the white of the rest of the world. She lays herself beside you, gloved hands tracing swirls into the snow. She props herself up on her arm and gazes down at you.

_“You’ve done well, soldat,”_ she says gently. Her smile is soft and kind.

_“You’re trying to bring back_ him _,”_ you tell her. _“That’s why you’ll never succeed. James Barnes died here, at this place, decades ago. You can’t bring him back.”_

Wanda shrugs. _“I’ve never known James Barnes. I don’t care one way or another for him. You, however…soldat, I think you can become whole again without resurrecting a dead man.”_

_“Let’s go home.”_ She kisses you as the world spins and blinks away and then-

You are back in Wakanda. Light filters through the windows and Wanda’s red nails still rest against your temples.

“Welcome back,” she greets you in Russian. You don’t think you’ve ever heard anything sound so sweet to your ears.


End file.
